On Intelligence and Knowledge

While the holy and divine prophets were seeking out and
investigating all that is connected with the salvation of souls, the
movement of their intellects towards God was spurred on by their longing
and kept fervent with cognitive insight and spiritual knowledge; and the
discriminative power of their intelligence, in its active discernment of
divine realities, was full of understanding and wisdom. Those who imitate
them will also seek the salvation of souls with cognitive insight and
spiritual knowledge; and by investigating with understanding and wisdom
they will be able to discern the works of God. The intelligence recognizes two kinds of knowledge
of divine realities. The first is relative, because it is confined to the
intelligence and its intellections, and does not entail any real
perception, through actual experience, of what is known. In our present
life we are governed by this kind of knowledge. The second is true and
authentic knowledge. Through experience alone and through grace it brings
about, by means of participation and without the help of the intelligence
and its intellections, a total and active perception of what is known. It
is through this second kind of knowledge that, when we come into our
inheritance, we receive supranatural and ever-activated deification. The
relative knowledge that resides in the intelligence and its intellections
is said to stimulate our longing for the real knowledge attained by
participation. This real knowledge, which through experience and
participation brings about a perception of what is known, supersedes the
knowledge that resides in the intelligence and the intellections. Knowledge, that is to say, is of two kinds. The
first resides in the intelligence and its divine intellections, and does
not include, in terms of actual vision, a perception of what is known. The
second consists solely in the actual enjoyment of divine realities through
direct vision, without the help of the intelligence and its intellections.
But the intelligence is capable of giving us an intimation of what can be
known through true knowledge and so of arousing in us a longing for such
knowledge. According to the wise, we cannot use our
intelligence to think about God at the same time as we experience Him, or
have an intellection of Him while we are perceiving Him directly. By
'think about God' I mean speculate about Him on the basis of an analogy
between Him and created beings. By 'perceiving Him directly' I mean
experiencing divine or supranatural realities through participation. By
'an intellection of Him' I mean the simple and unitary knowledge of God
which is derived from created beings. What we have said is confirmed by
the fact that, in general, our experience of a thing puts a stop to our
thinking about it, and our direct perception of it supersedes our
intellection of it. By 'experience' I mean spiritual knowledge actualized
on a level that transcends all thought; and by 'direct perception' I mean
a supra-intellective participation in what is known. Perhaps this is what
St. Paul mystically teaches when he says, 'As for prophecies, they will
pass away; as for speaking in tongues, this will cease; as for knowledge,
it too will vanish' (I Cor. 13:8); for he is clearly referring here to the
knowledge gained by the intelligence through thought and intellection.